Time and Grief
Grief is the normal and natural reaction to any change from what is familiar in life. It is the emotional response to change. It can be defined as a feeling associated with the things we wish might have been different or better in any relationship, whether it is with a person, a pet, a job, an educational experience, or even a place of residence, just to name a few. Grief can be a result of wishing we had spent more time together, or it can be related to unmet hopes and dreams that were never realized due to an unexpected and early end.
Simply stated, grief can be overwhelming! Grief can show up in a variety of ways. Some people find that the confusing feelings that grief generates interfere with sleep, while others find it difficult to get up and function after waking up. Some people find that they feel sad or cry over things that never seemed to bother them before. Many find themselves longing for that lost relationship. Some find themselves easily irritated, while others do not have the energy to feel much of anything. For some, the memories leading up to and including the moment of loss overshadow all their fond memories of that relationship.
The grief each person experiences is influenced by a variety of factors. The intensity of that emotional relationship, the amount of unfinished business in that relationship, and how we try to deal with the pain of the loss are among the primary components.
The reality is that time, in and of itself, is not really a factor in true emotional recovery from loss. With the passage of time, we may become used to living with the pain of loss. As time goes by, most people simply learn to bury their feelings, rather than to take effective action to deal with that pain. If, after an arbitrary amount of time, you have persistent feelings of emotional pain and try to utilize medication to treat the “problem,” you are often just treating the symptoms of grief without actually doing anything to deal with the underlying problem.
Since grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss, doesn’t it make better sense to try to take personal responsibility to take effective recovery action, rather than to allow it to control your happiness? Most grievers really just want to feel better.
The reason that people have a difficult time in recovering from the pain of emotional loss is because they do not have the tools to take action. “The Grief Recovery Handbook” is a step-by-step action plan for recovery. It starts at the beginning with what you learned in your childhood about dealing with loss and why many of these “tools” were ineffective. It then gives you “new” tools to deal with the unfinished business in that lost relationship. It offers you the opportunity to safely deal with those things that make remembering painful. It will allow you to be able to enjoy your memories and share them with others, rather than finding them overwhelming.
